Snakers and skinners to compete in log-pull

Snaking logs has nothing to do with snakes, unless one crosses your path while you're at it, and mule skinning has nothing to do with the distasteful image that phrase calls to mind.

Snaking logs has nothing to do with snakes, unless one crosses your path while you’re at it, and mule skinning has nothing to do with the distasteful image that phrase calls to mind.

Combine the two, though, and it makes for not only a time-honored method of bringing logs to market, but also a fine spectator sport.

One of Mule Day’s newest competitions, the log-pull, will be staged this year for the second time after it debuted in 2012 because a Theta farm wife wanted folks to see how forestry was done long before monster machines plucked logs from where they fell and loaded them on huge trucks as easy as a kid playing Pick Up Sticks.

“I was raised up around mules,” said Anita King, who doesn’t do log-pulling herself but helps her husband by keeping their mules fed, looking good and loved. “That’s what my job is.

“I just grew up in it and love anything to do with the mules,” she continued, explaining why she introduced the log-pull at last year’s festivities. “I love Mule Day, and that’s why I try to think of new events and tell people how they used to do a long time ago.”

Those were the days when mule skinners snaked logs out of the woods by harnessing the intelligence and strength of two, three, four or more mules to drag the fallen timber between standing trees through twisting and uneven terrain for loading and shipping to a mill.

Although there’s no agreement on what “mule skinner” means, one of the most interesting theories holds that it describes someone who can outsmart, or “skin,” a balky, stubborn mule. On that note, those who know mules say the animals aren’t necessarily stubborn but have a well-tuned sense of self-preservation that makes them stop short when danger, such as a snake, crosses their path.

But that has nothing to do with “snaking,” which just describes the act of dragging fallen logs through the obstacle course of a timber lot.

The course for the Mule Day log-pulling competition is more straightforward. A path 12-feet wide and 10-feet long is laid out in the ring at the Bridle & Saddle Club in Maury County Park. Competitors hook their two-mule teams to a log using chains and snaking tongs, urge them forward with voice commands and repeat it several times using larger logs until they can’t go the full distance of 10 feet.

But going the distance doesn’t necessarily determine the winner of the prize money — $100 for first place, $75 for second, $50 for third and $25 for fourth. Once the pulls are done, spectators choose the winners based on performance, control of the mules and their strength.

“The crowd of people is the judge on it,” King said, adding that there are two classes of competition, one each for small and large mules.

Joey Mills, a Santa Fe mule-logger who won the 2012 competition but will leave competing to his sons this time around, provides the raw material for the log pull.

“I normally take just whatever spot I’m in on a tract I’m logging and will pick some of the bigger ones to make the event possible,” he said. “I try to get two really big logs that weigh between 4,500 and 5,000 pounds each. That way the crowd can see how they’re really supposed to act when they get loaded down.

“And we choose other different sizes so the animals can work up to heavier loads,” he added, “like if you were working out.”

This year’s log-pull will begin at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, April 4, in the Main Arena.